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Jack_www
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I know that the pope is dieing just by looking at him on the news. Why cant he retire? Someone that sick is very limited in what they can do.
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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:31
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http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/worldnews.php?ID=2097
quote:
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 3, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Responding to media speculation, one of John Paul II's closest aides, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, says there is no reason for alarm over the Pope's health.
The prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who lunched with the Holy Father on Wednesday, said: "The Pope is a strong man, lucid in mind, with a clear view of the world."
"Of course he has real difficulties with pronunciation, especially when he is tired, and he has problems walking," he said Thursday at a book presentation.
Today, the Pope had a full schedule of audiences. In the morning he received Jean Obeid, Lebanon's Foreign Affairs Minister; three bishops from the Philippines; and the Redemptorists participating in their congregation's general chapter.
The Pope was also to receive in audience Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who is in Rome to attend the European Union's Intergovernmental Conference.
Cardinal Re's statements were made after some news media exaggerated statements made by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna.
In an interview on Austrian national radio, the Vienna archbishop said that "even a life as full and intense" as this Pope's "has to end sometime." He said that that was something quite natural, but what is unusual is that it should occur "in everyone's view."
"Everyone is seeing a sick Pope, incapacitated, who is dying -- I don't know how close he is to death -- who is nearing the last days and months of his life," the cardinal said. He added that the image of the frail Pope "is a difficult sign for our society, which idolizes health."
Cardinal Schönborn's interview was published by an international agency under a headline, "The Pope Is Dying."
A spokesman for the Vienna prelate, Erich Leitenberger, said later that Cardinal Schönborn's statements should be taken "philosophically and not literally."
The previous day, John Paul II's personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, said that the press had distorted a private comment made by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to the point that it made the German weep.
On Thursday, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer came away from an audience with the Pope relieved that his health seemed better than recent reports had suggested, the news portal News.com said.
"It's not like in the media. He is not on the brink," Downer said after the Vatican meeting.
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JCG
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between a rock and a hard place
Feb 2002
time: 00:31
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He should retire, but since the tradition usually doesn't have Popes retiring and dying "out of office", he'd have to set the first precendent, and probably neither he nor the upper Church officials want to do that...a stubborn but respectable position.
But well, all in all, he's just another human being (even for those that think he's God's "man" on earth), with all the virtues and vices of a mortal, he's not perfect nor is he right in every area (nor does he pretend to be).
At least, in plenty of other causes, he did have good intentions and tried to act upon them.
Btw, It wouldn't be the Pope's hypocrisy, it'd be hypocrisy in the religion as a whole, if that was the matter...
([devilsadvocate] which, for those inside, isn't, as the Church believes it can realistically follow the "love the sinner, hater the sin" idea...[/devilsadvocate]...won't try to explain how, since I'm not anti-gay nor anti-gay rights, so I'll leave it at that...)
In any case, if you're not Catholic, anything that the Pope says/writes on his deathbed about all this doesn't directly affect your personal life & ideas...
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Dr Strangelove
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You have to admit he has taken his church a long way these past twenty five years. He has a great deal of charisma, and has been a people's pastor at a time when society in the developed world has grown progressively more impersonal. When you consider all that he has done maybe it's a little easier to forgive what he is leaving behind for the next man. I wonder if his successor will continue the journey or instead try to turn back the hands of time.
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05-10-2003 20:59
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